One of my local movie theaters closed down last month. The backstory isn’t an unfamiliar one- rising rents, COVID impacts that never quite subsided, inflation, changing viewing habits, aging owners seeking retirement. Choose one or choose all. The theater, Cinema World in bucolic Fitchburg, MA, until March 31 sat on […]
Ode to the HD DVD: 2nd in the market, 1st in our hearts
I recently picked up a trove of HD DVDs and a standalone HD DVD player off of Facebook Marketplace (damn you, Zuck!) for a cool $30. Despite having a house outfitted with 4K TVs and a sprawling selection of streaming services at my fingertips, I’ve found myself oddly obsessed with […]
Celebrating 20 years of Attack of the Clones, the most Star Wars-y Star Wars of them all
Attack of the Clones is my favorite Star Wars movie. Not ironic! Not a joke! This one truly has it all when it comes to the spirit of George Lucas’s saga, and when I get the urge to watch the most Star Wars-y of the Star Wars movies, it’s AOTC […]
Famous Monsters of Filmland 290
I have two feature articles in this year’s edition of FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND magazine! It’s a huge honor to contribute to this legendary magazine. I covered John Carpenter’s incendiary THEY LIVE for its 30th anniversary (spoiler alert- it’s as relevant today as ever!) and also the 35th anniversary of […]
Blade Runner 2049 Reflections
Interesting. That’s the word stuck in my mind after taking in Blade Runner 2049. Not good. Not bad. Interesting. 2049 is not Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, and quickly shirks off any notion that it could be. It takes its own tone immediately, albeit a subservient one. Scott’s film is the […]
The Last Jedi, and a new hope for weird Star Wars
The Force Awakens isn’t a bad movie. It does what it sets out to do. The issue I had with it is it didn’t seem to aspire to do very much. It played it so safe, over-pivoted so hard from the unrestrained zaniness of the Lucas prequels that, while a […]
Logan: Here comes tomorrow
I still remember my first introduction to the X-Men. It was a Super Bowl sometime in the mid 80s, one of the Montana years. I was dragged along in tow with my family to a neighbor’s party. They had a son, older than me, and we were paired off as […]
Trainspotting and the Ghost of ‘Sally’
I’ll call her ‘Sally’ out of respect for the dead. We worked together at McDonald’s, the last refuge of scoundrels and lower-middle class ambitions. Fitchburg, Mass. long had strong undercurrents of vice coursing through it. Heroin was no different. In the mid-90s, it roared to the top of the menu. […]
Growing up in the Dark Ages of Star Wars
“This is it. They’re making a new Star Wars.” This was me, to my parents, my friends, the disinterested kid next to me on the bus, our local postal worker- everyone I knew. In my hands, the novel “Star Wars – Heir to the Empire” by Timothy Zahn, its foil […]
Remembering Wes Craven
A knife to the gut. A plunge from on high. It comes out of nowhere, sudden and fast. Its horror isn’t so much in the act itself, but in its explosive speed and its undeniable finality. Like a cart over the rails, once set in motion there’s no stopping it. […]
Jurassic World – A Benevolently Absurd Modern Blockbuster
I couldn’t stop laughing. During the course of its two-hour-plus run time, Jurassic World dishes up something for everyone. As in, everyone in the world. All ages and all demographics are assembled, ushered into an Epcot Center-like faux theme park setting to square off against the real reason we’re in […]
Ascent Into Madness: The Wachowski’s Have Made the Craziest Movie Ever
I finally got the opportunity to see Jupiter Ascending. Jessika surprised me with it last night, the deluxe 3D Blu Ray version no less. The 3D functionality of our TV was dormant for at least two years, but this seemed like a good a catalyst as any to knock the dust off the glasses […]
MAD MAX FURY ROAD: A Post-Apocalyptic Fable for the 21st Century
We live in a terrifying world. The cult of ISIS marches through the Middle East, with its black clad fundamentalists consumed by zealotry dispensing brutal violence without a pause. On the flip side, callous operators dispense drone strikes and missiles from afar, the deaths of innocents engulfed in flames tallied […]
‘We’re Home’ – Star Wars Brings a Generation Full Circle
When Han Solo and Chewbacca appeared together on screen for the first time in over 30 years via last week’s new Star Wars The Force Awakens teaser trailer, it took Harrison Ford just a single line to bring an entire generation to its emotional knees– “Chewie,” Ford’s aged voice uttered […]
A Brief History of Star Wars Teaser Trailers, 1995 – 2005
I have to admit, George Lucas had me fooled. After 2005’s Revenge of the Sith, I really thought Star Wars movies were a thing of the past. In interview after interview, Lucas steadfastly insisted that the story was done. I believed him. I put Stars Wars on the shelf, its […]